


(Pretty) Woman

by soixantecroissants



Series: Woman [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bandit Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Bandit Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Robin Hood, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soixantecroissants/pseuds/soixantecroissants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Robin’s Merry Men find themselves properly schooled on what it is to be a woman. Based on the prompt: “The only thing you’re good for is annoying me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Pretty) Woman

She’s glaring again.

Well – not _glaring_ , strictly speaking, so much as doing that thing where her face goes stone-like and unreadable – but he’s been on the receiving end of such looks often enough himself to know when she’s not terribly _pleased_ about something, either.

He’s not certain what compels him to go and cheer her up a bit, but whatever it is, he’s regretting it immediately as he strides over to her corner table, having to clear his throat several times before she finally bothers looking up at him.

“Hi, Will,” she says, with a rather poor show of enthusiasm, considering all the trouble he’s gone to in approaching her. But he’s determined to see this through now, he is – isn’t Ana always telling him to think a bit less of himself and more about others every once in a while? – and so he settles in beside Regina, props an elbow onto the table and smiles at her in a magnanimous way.

She’s trying very hard not to glance toward the bar again, where Robin has found himself tasked with entertaining some sultry young redhead, an exotic-looking thing who’s already turned multiple heads in the room, with smokily shadowed eyes and a heaving bosom near to spilling out of her lace-trimmed corset (…not that Will’s been paying much attention, really).

As far as Will’s concerned, Robin only appears to be doing his due diligence as a gentleman, no more, no less, smiling politely at the girl and bending gamely to pick up the handkerchief she’s just dropped to the floor with a careless sort of giggle. If his face winds up a touch too close to her chest when he stands upright again, well, who could blame the man when she’s given him so little room to himself in the first place?

“You’ve nothing to fear with him, love,” Will tells Regina in his most reassuring tone, smiling brighter still when her only response is to stare blankly at him. “With Robin, I mean. He’s fancied other women before—” that stare of hers begins to narrow, and he hurries on to make his point, “—but trust me when I say none of them could ever hold a candle to you, in his eyes.”

She goes on staring, and then he adds with a sincerity even she can’t argue with (punchy little thing that she is), “I’ve personally never seen a man so bloody in love with someone, until you came in and shook up his life.”

He thinks he might have won her over with that, and he’s congratulating himself on a job solidly done when she sighs and mutters, rather cryptically, “It’s not that.”

Will deflates instantly, dropping all pretense at mollycoddling her – if she insists on being so strong-headed about it, he decides, then she can very well handle her own damn moods. “Well what the bloody hell is it then, Regina?” It’s not that he doesn’t care, he defends inwardly when his mental image of Ana turns on him with a fairly sour expression; it’s simply that he’s at a loss for what exactly he’s expected to do about it.

Ana, of course, would know just the right things to say, he thinks, glumly kicking himself for walking into some situation that only a woman could straighten back out. Honestly, who can understand these creatures sometimes?

“Don’t worry about it,” Regina says maddeningly, as if to prove his point, and, well, if the lady insists. Will shrugs, letting the matter drop.

The redhead is now coyly reaching for one of the two pitchers in Robin’s hands, though there’s nothing Will had seen to suggest such an offer had been made to her. Robin, bless the man, looks slightly chagrined but says nothing, kindly keeping a straight face while she takes a sip and grimaces as daintily as she can at the unexpectedly bitter brew.

Grinning to himself – Granny’s ale certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, and Will can only think of one woman aside from the old broad herself who’s been known to drink him under the table – he turns to Regina, looking to have a good laugh with her at the fair maiden’s expense.

Regina, however, is now making a thorough study of the empty cup in front of her, pondering things she’s not likely to share with him any time soon. Will scowls openly at her (if she notices, she doesn’t let on) and slouches forward in his seat, wondering if he’s to spend the remainder of his evening in such disagreeable company. Most peculiarly then, she begins picking at the stray hairs from her braid, examining the ends of them before reaching to flick bits of leaf and other remnants of forest from her collar in a similarly irritable manner.

He’s no idea what’s gotten into her, quite truthfully.

To Will’s immense relief, Robin is eventually successful in excusing himself, making his way to their table with one drink still in hand, clapping Will across the shoulder and then pressing a rueful smile into Regina’s hair before dropping down to her other side. He slides the flagon over to her as something of an apology, biting a lip in amusement when she primly lifts it without a word.

He murmurs things to her that Will can’t quite make out, not that he’s particularly eager to anyway, and Regina suddenly becomes rather immersed with her ale in a way that makes Will suspect she’s only doing so to hide a smile of her own.

The redhead, visibly taken aback by this turn of events, proceeds to pout by the bar before her gaze snags most alarmingly on Will instead. Cowed, he turns toward Regina and Robin post haste, talking too-loudly at them about something or other until he’s reasonably confident that he’s back in the clear.

He’s already dug himself into a right mess with Ana these past few months, apparently by being no more “oblivious about everything” than usual, whatever that means; it wouldn’t do to give her any more reasons for tossing him out on his arse in the middle of the sodding night, wondering what it was he’d done this time to disappoint her so.

Women. Honestly. Bloody mysteries, the lot of them.

They retire earlier than usual that night, Robin giving their excuses to Will before folding Regina into his cloak and nudging her toward the tavern door. Will helps himself to the rest of the ale and waves them off with a jokingly put-upon “Well get on with it then, you two,” followed by a wink for the lady, grinning broadly when she rolls her eyes at him.

She doesn’t soften until they’ve reached the exit, leaning upward to touch her nose ever so briefly against Robin’s jawline. He turns into her with another smile, deposited just beside her ear this time, and the door swings shut on them right as Will starts to feel as though he ought to look away.

She’s still settling into this, he supposes, this business of being loved, and quite frankly he can’t think of a man better suited for the job than Robin. He’d meant what he said about the two of them – even the most obtuse sort of person could easily catch on to the depth of Robin’s feeling for Regina – and he knows that none of it was news to her, really.

All the same, Will can’t help but think her reaction to that woman by the bar had been a rather curious one indeed.

…

“It’s odd,” he’s confiding to Ana later that evening, and she looks curiously up from the handful of blooms he’d nicked from a shop on his way back to their cottage. “Regina’s never really struck me as the jealous sort before. Now her counterpart, on the other hand…”

He grins at the memory of Robin during a recent job of theirs, reluctantly sidelined and looking less-than-pleased while Regina flirted her way into the Sheriff of Nottingham’s back pocket, securing the man’s heart as well as the keys to the town coffers.

“What did the other woman look like?” Ana wants to know, bending back over the vase and fussing around with her arrangement while Will frowns at her, wondering if he’s just walked himself into some sort of trap.

“Well I didn’t – it’s not like I was—”

“Was she prettier than Regina, do you think?”

Will clams up, more than certain he’s in for it now. So this is what he gets, then, for trying to demonstrate what a thoughtful person he can be. This will surely teach him to reconsider the next time he decides to get in touch with his more sympathetic side.

Still, the tone Ana has taken with him thus far could only be described as one of harmless curiosity, and she’s never been one to play mind games before. He squints at her in an oblique fashion, but she betrays nothing to him, her lovely face firmly placid as she finishes with the flowers and turns to put a kettle on the stove.

“Robin only has eyes for Regina,” he says to her backside, stubbornly. “What bloody difference does it make what the other one might’ve been wearing, or how she’d done up her hair or what have you?”

“That’s not my point, Will,” sighs Ana, setting out two matching teacups and regarding him as though he were no better than one of her schoolchildren. “Regina is a gorgeous woman, is she not?”

Entirely unsure how he’s supposed to respond to that, Will can only stammer out a “Yes – I mean, I suppose – I haven’t really—”

And truly he’s never paid Regina that much mind at all – at least nothing beyond a passing appreciation of her bow arm, and her ability to keep even the unruliest of Robin’s men in check with a single, cutting raise of her brow. She’s always dressed herself conservatively, whether out of practicality or personal preference Will can’t say, and though her features _are_ distinctly feminine, he’s never ventured to wonder at what’s hidden underneath all those loose-fitting tunics and sensible cotton trousers.

Not to mention the fact that Robin may very well skin him alive for ever attempting to guess at such things.

At any rate, Will hardly knows what any of this has got to do with anything at all, which must be stated quite plainly on his face because Ana is saying to him then, very patiently, “No, of course you haven’t.”

“How is that a bad thing?” Will asks in a defensive manner. “Anastasia, you know very well how I feel about—”

But she doesn’t seem a bit interested in any grand overtures of love he has to make to her today, shaking her head in a commiserating manner as she says, bafflingly, “Poor thing,” then, “I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for her, having to deal with you lot all the time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he protests, before adding an eager “Thanks, love” when she slides a tray of sunflower seed biscuits over to him.

“Always surrounded by men, with your mindless cavorting and your silly pursuits, not to mention rather poor concept of what passes as hygiene,” Ana continues, listing off each offense with a growing passion, as though she’s suffered in silence for far too long. “While you carry on being men, you don’t realize what a burden it is for her to be treated as one too. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.”

He struggles for a beat while she pours the tea, then hazards a rather pathetic-sounding “Well but of course we know she’s not _actually_ a man.”

“You still see her as one, more or less.”

“We see her as one of our own,” Will argues as he reaches for the cup Ana’s just handed him, and he gazes appreciatively down through a steam cloud at the chrysanthemum petals and some other blossom he can’t identify floating along the surface. “Besides, why would she want to be seen as a woman, anyway?”

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?” Ana lifts a single, tart little brow at him from across the table. Will is struck with the sudden worry that she’s picked up a thing or two from Regina, and then he’s left wondering whether Ana isn’t onto something after all, what secret grievances Regina might have confided to her regarding Robin’s Merry Men.

He thinks of all the times he’s turned to Regina with an indelicate observation about some desperate lass at the tavern, or one of John’s numerous long-legged conquests, and he feels a bit dismayed with himself.

“Well,” he tries reasoning again, “I’m sure being objectified or goggled at is the last thing Regina wants.”

“How very like a man to consider that a valid point,” Ana remarks, in such a way that Will realizes it had been a very wrong thing to say.

“I just believe Regina would prefer to be taken seriously, is all, and you know how we lads can get distracted from what’s important when we’ve something pretty to look at.” He gives Ana a sheepish sort of grin, hoping to charm her into forgiving the more inherent flaws of his sex, but she’s unmoved.

She takes a careful sip of her tea, sweeps her golden locks to one side and tugs free a minor wrinkle in her skirts before wondering, too innocently, “Are you suggesting that a woman can’t be respected or taken seriously if she’s dressed as one?”

Will’s face falls. His thoughts turn guiltily over her own appearance – without question the most breathtaking of all, no offense intended for Robin – and how he’d never once presumed her to be frivolous or simpleminded because she cares after the way she looks, particularly when she does so with such a quiet, unassuming sort of confidence.

How could he, after all, when he’s done nothing but impose upon her good graces, living in the cottage she tends to while he’s away (cavorting about, as she’d so aptly put it), helping himself to the things she’s put on their table, and loving her wholly, selfishly, all because she’s allowed it of him?

Taking pity on him then, Ana glides over to his side, settling gently into his lap with a soft smile that he hardly deserves. Her arms drape over his shoulders, and he moves his to encircle her waist with a despondent sigh.

“You’re a good man, Will Scarlet,” she declares to him, and though he thinks that’s a bit generous of her, he’s come to realize, in all these years of getting to love her, that it’s a rather useless thing to argue when she’s decided to be right about something.

…

In the days that follow, Will begins to notice a subtle change in Regina.

They’re small things, really, and at first he’s half-certain he’s only imagined them, the vaguely floral scent that lingers after she’s stalked by, a glint of something golden at her earlobe that could simply be a trick of the sunlight. There’s a rosier glow to her cheeks than before, a faint but lasting flush that one might easily attribute to the unseasonable chill in the air (though Will has his doubts).

Her lips somehow have more color to them too, a touch of rouge now adding to the fire in that customary scowl of hers. Most curiously, Robin seems to have taken a liking to that shade as well, wearing it in subtle smears on his tunic collar, pressed along the underside of his jaw and even one corner of a pleased little smile as he leaves their tent in the mornings.

Still, as Ana had made so thoroughly apparent, Will’s not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to the art of being a lady, and a proper one at that. Determined to remain impartial from now on, he keeps his thoughts to himself – though that blouse Regina’s got on one evening appears to have taken greater liberties with the amount of collarbone it normally shows, and hold on a minute, but Will could have sworn that Ana owned a rather similar style and cut…

(She’s frustratingly evasive about it when he asks, slyly pressing her plump pink lips to his in a kiss that effectively silences him for some time before he’s realized she’d never given him any real answer.)

But he’s not the only one of Robin’s men who’s sensed that something’s different, it seems – unless Will’s imagining that too, the way Much develops an unfortunate stutter whenever Regina happens nearby, or how even John starts to hold himself somewhat straighter while the two of them consult their maps, discussing the finer points of a break-in they’ve devised together.

“You’re looking quite lovely today, Regina,” Will hears someone saying sincerely as he holds out a bowl to her at breakfast, realizing too late that he’d been the one who’d spoken. He’s recoiling the instant the words make their escape, fully expecting some withering reply, or at the very least another one of those dark-eyed glares to scrape mercilessly over him as he stands there and fumbles stupidly with his own bowl.

Much to his surprise, however, she only graces him with an enigmatic half-smile before taking her porridge to the gardens at the edge of camp, leaving Will to puzzle over what exactly had just come over him then.

Friar Tuck is tending to a leafy row of beetroot when Regina makes her approach, and perhaps it’s more than just the physical exertion that has him blushing furiously when she hands him her share of breakfast.

It’s the hair, Will thinks, that finally does it.

For as long as he’s known her, this woman who’d blown into their lives like some storm at sea, she’s never cared to tame her hair any more than she has her temper, always thrown to one side in some riotous fashion. He secretly suspects that Robin rather prefers it that way; the man may be judicious about keeping his hands from wandering in ways that ought to stay private, but he’s hardly shy about nudging a nose into her loose-flowing locks, or unraveling her braid with a teasing finger in front of all his men.

The thought of Regina bothering with a hairbrush (the idea of her _owning_ a hairbrush) or sitting still for a mirror is in fact so preposterous to Will that the first time she breezes by target practice with her hair actually looking halfway tamed, he’s so taken aback that poor Anton the giant nearly winds up with an arrow to his backside.

She’d taken small sections of her hair and twisted them into a simple sort of knot at the back of her head, the remaining tresses left down but glossier than Will recalls them ever being, all but gliding wherever the autumn air reaches to tease at them. Robin takes to casually toying with the ends while Regina conducts their weekly meetings, commanding as ever and utterly unimpressed by the men suddenly tripping over their feet and finding themselves at a loss for intelligent things to say in her presence.

If Robin’s aware of how useless his men have become and why, he makes no indication of it apart from the occasional smug side-eye, or a hand at Regina’s waist that could be considered almost possessive. He alone seems unaffected by her newfound interest in such things as lip paints and bobby pins, or at least no more affected than usual, and Will supposes there can exist few truer signs of a man’s love than that.

He eventually recovers enough from the shock to recognize Ana’s handiwork in Regina’s subtle transformation, accustomed as he is to his own love’s characteristic style, the way her hair’s always done up in some polished and elegant manner (though he’s yet to witness the effort behind it all, half-guessing it to be nothing short of sorcery).

And while Regina’s brand of beauty is not precisely that – a bit more carefully attended to now, certainly, but still rather understated, without losing that touch of wildness Robin is clearly so partial to – Will is quite convinced of the part Ana had played in all this, and he is captivated by her all the more for it.

Of course, try as he might to happen upon them conspiring together, he never once catches a glimpse of Ana’s pale pink skirts anywhere near the campsite, not an echo of her tinkling, bell-like laugh nor a hint of the rosewater that always seems to follow her everywhere (stayed on her pillows in the blurred-grey mornings, lingering in his clothes but fading steadily, regrettably, throughout the day the longer he’s away from her).

He briefly takes to eavesdropping, loitering by Regina and Robin’s shared tent for longer than is considered polite until Robin is suddenly beside him, asking pleasantly whether he can be of any assistance and smiling in a bemused way at Will’s mumbled, nonsensical answers before he’s hastily excusing himself and shuffling off.

He invariably finds Ana calmly pouring the tea and setting out dinner by the time he’s returned to their cottage, without a thing to suggest she’d been entertaining guests while he was gone, and he’s forced to concede that his curiosity will likely never be satisfied as far as they’re concerned.

Perhaps there is magic in all women, then, in more ways than he’ll ever know.

…

The spell Regina had cast over camp finally shows its first signs of breaking when she arrives for weapons training one frosty afternoon, attired in a fur-lined vest, white leather gloves, and a dress. It’s modestly styled, to be sure, but a dress all the same, with slender-long sleeves and a flattering taper from the waist down, hemline falling to just reveal (but only just) her more practical choice of footwear beneath.

Dumbfounded, the men can do no more than stare at Regina, as though seeing her true for the first time – this _woman_ she’d apparently been hiding within her all along, standing so unapologetically before them now – and they have no bloody clue what it is they’re supposed to do with her.

Then it seems to occur to them the sheer lunacy of such a woman not only carrying a sword but preparing to use it, and they’re giggling self-consciously amongst themselves when she draws her blade with an impatient expression, gesturing imperiously for someone to join her in the dueling circle. Their incredulous, laughing faces abruptly flatten then, the fog lifting enough for them to recall that she’s not just a woman at all but Regina, one of their own kind, and Much, gulping, shoves Will forward.

“Sorry, mate. Take one for the team, eh?” says the lad, helpfully pressing a scabbard into his hands.

“But it won’t be a fair fight,” Will protests, loudly, to the gathering crowd. He observes Robin standing leisurely off to one side, disappearing his smirk behind a bright red apple. “I can’t…I can’t in good conscience beat a _woman_!” Will waits for the men to voice their indignation, exclaiming for him to _mind his manners_ and _fight her like any other man, if you know what’s good for you!_ , and then he sends a subtle wink Regina’s way.

“And what kind of ‘woman’ is it that you think I am, Will Scarlet?” she wants to know, with a coy tilt of her head and a smile that shows every last one of her teeth.

“Oh, you’re in for it now,” comes Little John’s warning, rumbling with anticipation.

“Right, then,” Will says under his breath, rolling his shoulders loose. “Let’s get on with this, shall we?” He has every intention of putting up the best damn fight he’s got – it would be a great disservice to her, indeed, to do anything less – but then he takes a better look at her, standing there like some bloody warrior princess, lethal in both looks as well as her skills with a blade, and it shakes up his resolve more than he’d like to admit.

Here is an opponent unlike any other he’s faced before – which is absolutely ridiculous, he reminds himself, she’d been his sparring partner just the other week (…not that it ended all that well for him then, either). Meanwhile, she’s coolly regarding him as though she routinely has men like him for supper, and this, he thinks, _this_ is Regina, perhaps only just discovering these untapped sides herself, learning to own her womanhood and all the power that comes with it.

Will swallows audibly and assumes his usual stance – or some rough approximation of one, as it seems he’s quite forgotten where his feet ought to be placed or how he’s supposed to hold his sword. Regina hikes her skirts up to one knee for mobility’s sake, and there’s something unsettling in the too-graceful way she starts to approach him, a predator in the most dangerous sense of the word, one who has a point to prove, and he knows he’s lost before she even strikes.

The sparring exercise is over embarrassingly quickly, with Will splayed gracelessly on the forest floor, sweating profusely despite the cold, heaving to find his breath around the sword tip Regina’s leveled within an inch of his throat. The other men are positively beside themselves now, unable to contain the raucous sounds of their delight.

“That’s…but that was plainly cheating,” Will says, hoarsely, barely heard above the noise as Regina props him gingerly up against a tree. There’s not so much as a sheen to her face, he notices, while the perspiration beads and dribbles pitifully down his nose. “You had the unfair advantage of – of being—”

She steps shrewdly away to survey his profile for any lasting damages, and he scowls at her, the both of them knowing full well that his pride smarts more than any blow he’s sustained to the ribs. Or his left shin. Or that spot in his side where she’d exhibited an impressive degree of agility despite that damnable gown, with a well-aimed kick that left him wheezing on all fours.

He’ll claim for days, of course, that he’d thrown the fight – what sort of man would he be to _not_ let the lady win, after all? – if only to keep encouraging the heated exclamations of the other men, clamoring instinctively to her defense.

“Regina may have held the advantage, to be sure, but she beat you fair and square,” Little John is pointing out rather gleefully. “Not to mention a good half minute faster than usual.”

“That’s right, Will,” pipes up Much, looking much less frightened and much more confident now that he knows he’s chosen the winning side. “Maybe to level the playing field next time you ought to borrow some of Anastasia’s clothes to practice in? Gods – women, really – only know what additional skill it takes to master that sort of…well…” He searches carefully for just the right word before finishing with a solemn, “Everything.”

Will has no response to that, put-upon or otherwise, and he slumps tiredly to the ground with a wince. Regina graciously hands him a waterskin, and he mumbles his _thanks you_ s while his so-called mates continue to trade good-natured insults at his expense.

“Men,” Regina mutters with a half-affectionate, half-exasperated glance toward Robin, who’s winding his way over to them, looking too close to exploding with barely-held laughter. “Honestly. Sometimes I think the only thing they’re good for is annoying me.”

“We are a pretty useless lot,” Will says agreeably, while Robin closes his arms around Regina’s waist and pulls her back flush with his chest, paying not a bit of mind to the sword still loosely held in her grip.

“I try to tell her this on a daily basis,” Robin remarks dryly, “but she can’t be convinced not to give up on us quite yet.” Regina, not even bothering to roll her eyes this time, tucks her head beneath his chin, stealing away his half-eaten apple and sinking a satisfied little smile into its skin.

The next day she’s returned to wearing things a touch more suited for life in the woods, soft blouses and form-fitting pants in place of that ivory muslin gown (Will is hardly surprised when he spots it tucked away into the very back of Ana’s closet some weeks later). Gone are the darkly striking eyes – not that her gaze will ever lack for that depthless, piercing quality – as are the pigmented lip stains on Robin’s collar and that exposed stretch of throat just above it.

Regina’s hair is the one concession she’s made to her appearance, never again quite as carelessly windswept as it had once been, but Will supposes that’s more for Robin’s benefit than any of the other men; they needn’t any reminders, after all, that she is no more or less a woman for it, and no more or less a Merry Man at that.


End file.
